


Sinaiticus

by TwistedSunrise



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Autopsies, Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Drugs, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Government Experimentation, Guns, Hive Mind, Kleptocracy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Nuclear War, Post-War, Rating: NC17, Rebellion, References to Drugs, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Trans Female Character, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:09:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25765750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedSunrise/pseuds/TwistedSunrise
Summary: Renée Aubry’s a traitor. A traitor to the post World War III society of Sinaiticus. What was once a safe haven has become twisted in a web of lies. Sinaiticus has done terrible things and all Renée wants is to put a stop to it. With the help of a man named Gabriel she’ll uncover the truth. A rebellion is brewing and Renée just might be thrust at the forefront of it in her goal of putting an end to Sinaiticus.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character





	1. Haven

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first real novel project that I’m writing so it might not be the best. It does need editing but that will hopefully be resolved later. I hope you enjoy my first shot at writing a novel or something similar. Chapters will be released as they come out.

Chapter 1 Haven

“You do realize, Miss Aubry, that this is a level 12 infraction that falls under treason, espionage and is a direct violation of the code of conduct we enforce here at Sinaiticus, don’t you?” Gordon stands across from her, a man who age hasn’t exactly been kind to. There’s greying at his temples and all through his salt and pepper hair. It’s perfectly neat and well trimmed, clean cut. There’s wrinkling at his eyes and mouth, mostly under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.Those blue eyes almost look through her, his smile is tight lipped, polite. There are two guards holding each of her arms, keeping her rooted in place. “It’s unbecoming of such a talented scientist. We should just kill you, after all a traitor is not worth the trouble however, there is a far worse punishment that’s reserved for the most special of people, Miss Aubry.”

Her eyes widen, her breath catches in her throat and her hands toy with the rose quartz necklace around her neck. “Merde,” she says under her breath as she lets out a shaky exhale. “What are you going to do to me?” She asks and the man before her leans in closer, “ we’re taking you to the restricted patrol sector on the outside, you’ll be taken care of and you’ll long be dead before anyone realizes you’re even gone.” 

Renée was going to die. She feels a shudder of panic hit her, the feeling causing the bile to rise up her throat and collect in her mouth before she has to swallow it down. She can’t speak, her throat seizes shut and she clutches her necklace tighter. “Any last words, Miss Aubry?” She opened her mouth but unable to make a sound she closed it. “Well then, guards escort her to the outside, it’s such a shame you’ve been such a waste of a good scientist. You’ve provided many contributions and now they will have been the result of a worthless traitor.” 

Those are the last words he ever speaks to her. 

27 years she’s spent alive and now she feels the most alive knowing she’s going to die. Renée has long accepted the consequences of her actions and the knowledge that she’d die if she was ever caught. A part of her hoped naively for a humane death, a gunshot to the head. It would be quick and she would barely have enough time to register it, she would die and that would be it. She wouldn’t scream, she wouldn’t dare give Gordon the satisfaction of seeing her face contorted in fear. She wouldn't let him see her sweat, but she fears she already has. She feels anxiety well up in her chest as the guards walk her across the shiny, fresh laminate flooring. She can hear her own steps, she can feel her heart hammering as she walks in relatively the same pace as the security guards.

They reach the end of the corridor, one of the guards enters a key on a keypad and scans the identification tattoo on his wrist. The sector opens and the patrol sector is overgrown with foliage.The last time she’s seen it the foliage was trimmed back and wasn’t as overgrown as it is now. All of the foliage is dead and withered, brown and yellows are all she can see besides whites and greys. Some of the foliage curls in on itself, rolled up near completely. As they walk through closer and closer to the actual outside she notes that her breathing doesn’t get more difficult as she moves closer. The metal taste never reaches her mouth and she doesn’t begin to feel more sluggish. There’s still an unsettlingly foreboding feeling nestling itself in her gut. She still feels that voice in her head telling her that something is wrong but she keeps going.

As she moves out of the sector and into the outside she’s greeted by the harsh rays of the sun. It’s nothing like the bright fluorescent lights in the lab or in her living quarters. With this light she has to shield her face, squint her eyes and blink faster. The rays also feel warm rather than cold and unforgiving like the fluorescent lights are. When she allows herself to take in her surroundings her eyes widen in amazement. Sinaiticus always said it was a wasteland but she was never prepared for what it actually was. 

Instead of a nuclear wasteland a canopy of trees stretch out for miles and miles ahead of her. Unlike the foliage from the abandoned patrol sector the leaves are a brilliant green, deep and waxy and every bit the opposite of what she expects. The metallic taste that she expects never comes and she propels her legs forward, slowly walking toward the trees.

She’s alive and Renée realizes quickly that Sinaiticus lied. This acts as more of a banishment than a death like she originally thought. Why didn’t they just kill her? Why didn’t they just do what they do the angels and slowly disassemble her limb from limb? She looks at her hands for a moment, examining them. She examines the deep,slightly jagged scar stretching across the heart line of her left palm. The mark she made at the choosing ceremony that bound her to sinaiticus. It used to bring her joy. She used to look at it and know it meant she was supporting a good cause. Now she knew otherwise, it’s bittersweet looking at it and knowing she was supporting them, that she made contributions for them. The moment she figured out what they were doing she couldn’t support them anymore.

She takes a deep breath and drops her hand, she trudges forward, refusing to look back. She doesn’t have her data pad with her so her fingers idly drum against her thigh, itching to write something, anything. After a while of walking her feet start to hurt and she comes across a clearing, just ahead she can see a small settlement. All of the buildings seem to be made from wood and stone, there’s a path that’s worn in by various footprints and she follows it to the settlement.

She feels out of place still wearing her lab coat so she shrugs it off her shoulders and carries it. There’s people mulling about but not many, their numbers seem rather small. There’s people cultivating crops in the summer heat, wiping the sweat from their brows. It’s less technologically advanced than anything she’s seen. And then she sees him.

He towers over her, being near 7 feet tall to her 5’6” frame. He’s wiry and gangly looking,as thin as he is tall. He wears a leather vest with silver buttons clasping it shut. Other than the vest his chest is bare. His arms are covered in a webbing of scars that criss cross over each other. He wears a crow plague doctor’s mask and she can’t make out any of his features, she can’t even see his eyes since the glass eye holes are tinted so dark. “Who are you?”

He rasps the words out. His voice is deep and gravelly, she recognizes that voice, it’s Gabriel.

He’s the first angel. A group of genetically modified superhumans created by sinaiticus under the genesis project. His legs are cybernetic, made to look like flesh and bone but far better in every measurable way. The angels are peak humanity but even so most of them seem empty, like robotically hollow shells of what they once were. Most don’t speak organically anymore and sometimes you wonder if there was ever really anything there. But some of them remember their pasts after the microchip is implanted into their frontal lobes. Those are the fallen angels.

She knows Gabriel is a fallen angel. She knew it the second the alarms blared in her ears and she heard them speaking that there was a missing angel. That Gabriel was missing right before his trial and she couldn’t get to him. She was the one who failed them that day and in some ways she’s glad she did. She’s glad she doesn’t have the physical prowess that the others have.

“I’m Renée, Renée Aubry. We’ve actually met before. I used to repair your cybernetics.” He nods but doesn’t say anything for a moment, thus spurs her on the continue to speak. “You’re the same age as me, you were there at the start of project genesis. You-“ he cuts her off with a wave of his hand. “I know, I remember now. You’re a long way from Sinaiticus, Renée” he says the words accusatory, she’s sure he would be narrowing his eyes if she could see them. “I’m no longer a part of Sinaiticus. It’s- complicated- really complicated. I don’t know how much I should discuss or if they’re tracking me. I don’t know if they can even track me from the outside but-“ she stops herself, taking a moment to catch her breath. “There’s wrong things they’re doing, Gabriel. Terribly awful things, inhumane things. I just couldn’t- I couldn’t be a part of that.”

“So you left?”

She hesitated, clutching at the necklace around her neck, “not exactly.” The way Gordon says her name is fresh in her mind. The way he tells Renée that she’s going to die. And she believed him. She believed him when he said she was going to be dead by the time anyone noticed she was gone. She believed him when he used to say she was talented. She believed him when he said she was doing the right thing supporting sinaiticus. He was her role model, she wanted to be just like him.

“What happened? Start from the beginning.”

She starts from her 18th birthday, the choosing ceremony. She’s just freshly an adult and already she’s been trained to be the scientist sinaiticus wants. She’s never had a choice but she doesn’t think anything different would have suited her. She feels nervous wrapped in ceremonial silken robes. She’s standing in a chapel with 29 others. The ceiling curves upwards, there’s images displaying World War III on the walls. The devastation that led to sinaiticus. There’s images of nuclear warfare, of people dying. Then there’s images of deity, a man older than the war, a synthetic man with an android body. His synthetic features are perfect and Renée recalls the deep, calming green of his eyes and the glint of his perfect teeth.

There’s images of religion, the creator that made sinaiticus and influenced deity to build it. She used to believe in a god, in a merciful creator but now her faith is shattered. She remembers being called up, hearing her name from deity’s lips. She remembers going forward, being presented an arthame blade and feeling the weight in her hand. She remembers slowly pressing it into her palm, pressing too hard and wincing as red hot pain courses through her. As she drags the blade across her heart line. She cuts too deep and she can already feel the blood seeping through her fingers. She places her hand over a Tibetan quartz bowl filled with holy water and she lets the blood go into the bowl. She’s given her blood to sinaiticus. She’s given everything she has to their cause. Since she was 12 she’s been evaluated. She’s been psychologically profiled and so have the other scientists from a young, impressionable age. It’s an age where they don’t know any better. She talks about remembering having to get stitches because she’s cut too deep into her palm and that the rest of the ceremony is a hazy blur in her recollected memory.

“They’ve done so much but I wasn’t careful. I got caught. Gordon kicked me out, he almost killed me but he didn’t. I think he thought this would kill me, but with all the lies they’ve said and all of the lies they will say I don’t know what to believe.”

“So you’re a traitor?”

She nods and takes a deep breath. “I am a traitor but I don’t think that’s a bad thing in this case. Formally I’m a traitor for espionage, treason and violating code of law and the fundamental rules of Sinaiticus. I know it’s a lot to take in but- I want to help, in any way that I can.” 

“We don’t have a lot here at the moment. We could realistically use all the help we can get since our numbers are small. Haven is relatively new, it’s a safe place for all those who have been shunned away from Sinaiticus, there’s few of us now but we expect our numbers to rise. Just remember that in the beginning you will be watched closely, I can’t take any chances after the last attack.” 

“Last attack? Gabriel what happened?”

“It was nothing, just a rogue angel coming from sinaiticus, offered to help but went absolutely mad. Attacked some of our best angels here and said that they refuse to not be a part of sinaiticus and that they were doing it for their god and deity. Really scary shit, had to put a bullet between their eyes. But that’s just the way it is.”  
Knowing that there was attacks on Haven made Renée feel anxious, something told her that it wouldn’t be the last, that it was far from the last attack. She knew there were people blind in faith, that some angels went absolutely mad remembering who they were but still keeping their faith. She knew some angels snapped but she never thought she’d hear stories of it outside of sinaiticus.She’s heard of the gunshots, the disassembly, it wasn’t hard to believe that every defective angel was just killed.

“I thought they were just killed,” she says and Gabriel scoffs. “Oh no, the highly unstable ones or the ones that do serious infractions are brought to the outside because disassembly with them is difficult, nigh impossible. They put up a fight. They’ll literally try to tear officials limb from limb and throw them like rag dolls. The unstable ones are hell to deal with and I’m always afraid when one shows up. You can see the crazed look in their eyes and know they aren’t fully there. They rant and rave about sinaiticus and its teachings. It comes on suddenly and you can tell with the ones who can’t handle the revelations that they aren’t who people say they are. They just aren’t right.”

Renée takes a deep breath and looks at Gabriel. She has so many questions that need answers, so many things going through her head. “Could it be the microchip in their temporal lobe making them go crazy?” Gabriel nods, “could be but we don’t know for sure. We would have to perform an autopsy and extract the microchip that’s embedded in their brain .”

“I’m a biotechnologist, I could do it.” She says and Gabriel looks at her for a moment. “First you have to get settled into Haven before you can do anything like perform autopsies.”

“As soon as I’m ready I’ll perform an autopsy, but first I need to get settled in like you said.”

He nods at her, “welcome to Haven, Renée. As soon as you’re ready I’ll get the latest body and we’ll see if we can salvage anything.”

“Okay,” and with that she leaves, entering Haven, what’s supposed to be her new home. It doesn’t feel like home.


	2. Reborn

Chapter 2 Reborn

Renée immediately feels out of place and like she isn’t supposed to be here. She feels like she’s intruding upon something that isn’t something for her to see. She’s sure the feeling will fade but she still feels that apprehension despite her complete willingness to support their cause. She has nothing but the clothes on her back and it soon dawns on her that she doesn’t have anything to contribute without her data pad. The data pad that she’s sure is smashed beyond any form of repair. All of her evidence is gone, wiped away like a clean slate. She doesn’t fully remember each thing she’s uncovered and she feels like she’s back at square one without any real evidence to come by.

She hates the way that makes her feel. She feels like everything has been done for nothing and it’s another foreboding feeling muddled in with the rest of the foreboding feelings. She feels constantly on edge and when Gabriel comes up from behind her and taps her on the shoulder she nearly jumps out of her skin. 

“Do you want to take a tour or explore on your own. Also I’m assuming you don’t have any clothes so we can get you clothes at the main building since we provide clothes for newcomers. Eventually we need to have a colloquium with some of the other scientists to figure out where we can place you. There’s 5 other scientists currently and each has their own respective place here at Haven.”

“Thank you, Gabriel.” The main building is a lot bigger than she thinks it is. There’s several floors including a few underground levels and it’s built from high quality stone. There’s no windows and she’s surprised to find that it runs on solar energy and plant energy. They head down to a corridor and into an open room labelled supplies for newcomers. The letters look freshly painted, painted in chunky black lettering that looks slightly smeared. It isn’t perfect but it has a certain charm to it she can’t quite put her finger on.

“A lot of the supplies have been salvaged from raids, they’re things Sinaiticus keeps in bulk so they’d never miss them but they’re enough that we need them.” She grabs one of the bags marked take one only, a large eco bag that says Sinaiticus on it. She takes a toiletry kit, a pair of clothes and a few snack bars. She notes the special pills that she used to take labeled clearly for a group of people she falls under and she takes a bottle of said pills. There must be enough people like her for it to be needed. It’s enough for her to be settled in but not fully.

“Once I get these into a tent here I should be good to conduct an autopsy.” He looks at her in amazement, “so soon?” She nods as she holds onto the bag she’s filled with necessities. “I want to get it done as soon as possible. Will I be doing a full autopsy including toxicology report or just a brain assessment and external report?”

“We need a toxicology report. There’s serums that make them who they are that could be recorded to gain an accurate reading. The latest one has been dead for about 3 days. We would need a live angel to get an especially accurate reading but this will have to do for now.”

“I’ll get everything put away and then I’ll come back here.”

She leaves and comes back, noting Gabriel waiting with a pair of latex gloves which she takes and puts on. He leads her to the bottom floor of the basement which acts as a laboratory and morgue. The morgue smells like disinfectant and decay. The strong citrus smell of the disinfectant masks some of the smell of active decay but doesn’t mask it entirely. People die here, she has to realize that. People died in Sinaiticus but they were usually freshly dead when the autopsy was performed so there was no detectable trace of active decay.

Gabriel leads her to an operating table with a body placed on it. It’s a younger adult male who can’t be older than 23. His eyes are wide open, eyes slightly bulging out of their sockets. There’s a gunshot wound in his chest cavity and his left arm is made from titanium. “Gunshot to the chest but it doesn’t appear to have been made with a handgun or any type of conventional gun. It looks like it’s been made with a laser judging by the size of the wound and how it appears. There’s flash vaporizing signs as it’s cut through flesh. Did you use a laser weapon?”

Gabriel nods, “a laser weapon was used, but not by my own hand. One of the recruits that you’ll meet is in charge of dealing with a lot of the attacks and she dealt the damage.” 

“Judging by the putrefaction and the bloat and the starting of active decay it definitely lines up with him being dead for 3 days. He appears to have been healthy, teeth and extremities are well taken care of. He has an ID tattoo as all angels do on his left wrist. I feel we should do the examination of the brain first and take some tissue from the brain for the toxicology report.”

She gets a scalpel, his hair is already shaved off so she doesn’t have to worry about that. She makes an incision from the crown of his head horizontally each from just behind his ears. She uses a special saw to cut through his cranium, leaving flesh in fact as she goes. She starts uninstalling the microchip, partially by cutting it out of flesh and partially being careful to get the connectors out. She takes the chip out and puts it on a dish. She also takes a brain sample.

She draws blood from the femoral artery, something she’ll use for the report and she considers the autopsy to be completed. She doesn’t need to do a body autopsy. “We have the chip and so we can start analyzing it to see the cause but that might take a while. We can keep this in storage for now. Is there anything that needs to be done?”

“There’s a lot that needs to be done, Renée. We’re fighting a war, a war that I don’t know if we can win. Sinaiticus has numerous troops, an advanced technology system, we have a few angels, a few scientists and little plans on how to move forward. Sinaiticus hasn’t found us yet but it’s only a matter of time until they do. Finding the root cause of insanity within fallen angels might help us, it might give us an angle to manipulate this in our favour and give us more angel ranks but there’s still so much we need to do before we’re ready for the war that’s coming.”

“How do you even know there’s going to be a war, Gabriel?”

“There’s only a matter of time before people start realizing what’s actually happening, what Sinaiticus is doing. There’s only a matter of time before people start wondering about the past and what’s happened and when they do there will be a war. I can feel it. There’s so much we need to do and there’s so many people you need to be introduced to. First I want to introduce you to Alison, she’s the one who shot and killed the man you just did an autopsy for. She’s usually on the base of operations floor.”

The base of operations floor is a place she’s never been. It almost resembles Sinaiticus with its sterile white walls and the lack of pictures on the wall. There’s a door marked similarly to the way the main building is marked. The door reads ‘Archangel Alison’ and she knows immediately that it’s where she needs to go. She knocks on the door, waiting for a response while she shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet. “Yes?” A voice calls out, “hi, Gabriel said he wanted to introduce me to you.”

The door opens and a tall, athletically figured woman stands in the doorway. Her skin is darker as is her hair and she appears to just be in her early 30s. Her eyes are a hazel green and she’s wearing military fatigues. “You must be Alison, I’m Renée, Renée Aubry.” She holds out a hand to shake and Alison takes it, grasping her hand with a firm grip. As soon as she lets go of her hand Gabriel starts. “Renée has been working as a scientist for Sinaiticus since the start of the genesis project. She’s a biotechnologist authorized to perform autopsies. In fact we’re trying to analyze the microchips and serums in angels to determine the cause of insanity so we can potentially put an end to it and turn things in our favour. We just autopsied one of the angels you killed and we’re going to run a series of tests. I just thought she should meet you in person.”

Renée spoke up “it is very nice to meet you, Alison.” Alison looks at Renée for a moment and then back at Gabriel. “And this will work? We can’t afford anything like the reborn experiment happening. We already tried to alter the chemical composition of the angels before.” Alison says, just slightly exasperatedly.

“We didn’t know what was making them insane, what was wrong with them. We did it blindly. Now we have a way to figure it out so we can do it right.”

The reborn experiment was a series of testing on live angels. There’s archives of experiments that have been performed. From testing their physical endurance to testing their pain threshold. But Renée doesn’t understand. “What was the reborn experiment?” Gabriel seems to hesitate for a moment whereas Alison speaks. “A series of testing and trials made to measure things like physical endurance, pain threshold, cognitive abilities, social awareness and mental stability. They should never have been performed. They’re inhumane and make us just as bad as sinaiticus. You can read the archives on them later. Just know that they’re disturbing and they’ll subject you to the darkest history of Haven. Like the time we tortured one of the angels as they screamed about sinaiticus. Some of them couldn’t be left untied because they were so dangerous. Most were killed. Either way we don’t want a repeat of the Reborn experiment.”

Renée nods, “then there won’t be, but what if we need live blood samples to get an accurate reading? Plus it will be faster than the autopsy will take.” Alison nods, “then be prepared for a fight.” Renée suddenly looks away from her gaze, “then you’re best off getting any other scientist who’s capable enough to do it. I lack the physical prowess necessary to fight off one of you and it would probably be best.”

“We can train you,” Alison says and Renée laughs nervously. “I’m not exactly going to be the easiest to teach. I have the hand eye coordination of a blind bat. It’s part of why I wear glasses.” Her round framed glasses only added to the soft innocence of her features. “We can still teach you basic combat. At least then you’ll be somewhat prepared for war. I’d be more than willing to teach you.” Renée smiles but it’s devoid of any real happiness, it’s mostly out of politeness. She’s been told that all she was good for was being a scientist. She would never be fit enough to be anything else, she would never be coordinated enough. Training would only humiliate her but she doesn’t say much of anything. For a while at least.

“I can make and manufacture cybernetics and gadgets and laser weapons. I can provide so much more to the cause than combat.” Every voice that tells her that she can’t do it wins out, she knows she’ll never be what’s expected of her here. She’ll never be a leader or anything more than what she’s good at. She can tell herself lies to make her feel better but it will never fully detract from the truth of the matter. She remembers Gordon when he told her she failed, she remembers that disappointment, if she trains she’ll disappoint everyone.

She’ll be even worse than when she started.

“I won’t pressure you but the invitation for training is always open.” Renée doesn’t take it for a long while. “Anyway I have some questions on the man we autopsied,” Renée says quickly. “What sort of questions do you have?” Renée hesitates for a moment before speaking, “did you know him before?”

“Yes I knew him, he was always a bit emotionally unstable. But this? When I saw him it seemed like he had lost everything, before he had little things that told me he was normal but now? He’s dead because he turned out to be one of the emotionally unstable angels. He wasn’t a bad guy before. But then he started raving about their teachings and he attacked one of the higher ups. They couldn’t get him to disassembly, he was too unstable and so they had to send him to the outside. His name was Demetrius, you can’t find his records anymore but we have a list of some of his contributions to Sinaiticus and what he did before he went terminally insane.”  
“I’m going to need that document,” Renée says, practically on the balls of her feet. She thinks about what she could uncover through that document, her already constantly racing mind seems to speed quicker with possibilities. Her eyes light up with a childish wonder, Renée always gets like this with a new discovery.

Gabriel speaks up, “before we go to the archive room I’m going to have to debrief you on what Alison does, Renée. Alison is my second in command. She mostly handles raids, missions into Sinaiticus, combat training and is usually on the front lines during missions.” Renée thought it made sense. Alison was so calm, so well put together where she wasn’t. She seemed to know exactly what was going on and she had already demonstrated the willingness to train Renée, something Renée was not eager about. rather, Renée seemed like she was avoiding it with every fibre of her being.

She heads to the archive room with Gabriel, having to try to keep up with his long strides. It’s a room with different filing cabinets lining the walls and she quickly realizes it’s going to take forever to look through everything. “Do you know where his file is?” Gabriel nods, “it’s been freshly filed under D so we should be able to find it easily if I remember correctly.” There’s a filing cabinet marked D and it’s the last file to be filed. Renée touches the document carefully, almost like she’s afraid of destroying it accidentally. It’s marked Demetrius in plain bold lettering, the kind she’s seen in Sinaiticus. “How did you get this?” She asks, examining the lettering that appears to have been almost stamped on. 

“We go into the archive rooms of sinaiticus and steal the documents they won’t miss. Like all of the documents of those that come to the outside. They get burned or trashed and when they’re trashed they’re easy to come by.” He explains, Renée doesn’t say how much that unsettles her.

She opens the document. There’s a few psychiatric evaluations that all point toward the same thing, intense bouts of psychosis, delusions and difficulty seeing reality from fiction. It’s not as telling as she wants it to be and it seems obvious. There’s information missing she knows there is. But all the documents sinaiticus uses are burned away. All of the ones that are confidential are almost immediately burned to ash.

It’s clear this man is dangerous. Multiple counts of attacks, multiple people killed and injured, its surprising he went as easy as he did. But there’s a lot missing, half of the pages are ripped away, there are burn marks on one of the pieces of paper like it didn’t fully burn and refused to. She’s no closer than when she started.

“Are files usually this empty?” She asks incredulously, Gabriel nods. “We salvage what’s left of them. Sinaiticus is good at covering their tracks so we have to be rather careful.” He says and she wonders how they got the information in the first place. She still can’t believe they perform raids and she knows in her heart she won’t be good at them. She’s better at being behind the scenes, doing all of the research. “I need more to deduce things, I feel like I’m going on nothing until the toxicology report shows up.”  
“Then maybe you are, maybe there’s nothing else here with the current angel we just autopsied aside from the microchip we’re going to have analyzed. We’re still in the beginning stages of this. At least we aren’t conducting the reborn experiment again. At least we aren’t doing what the monsters at sinaiticus did to us anymore.” “Tell me about the Reborn experiment, show me documents, I want to learn what it is.”

“Are you sure you’re prepared for that?” All she does is nod.

The reborn experiments weren’t the most humane. They were experiments meant to psychologically get into why the angels were behaving the way they were. However the sane angels wanted to enact revenge on what they deemed to be the wrongdoings of sinaiticus. They were given little food, little water, they were kept in cages like animals without much of anything. “The worst incident was a man named Johnathan. He was incredibly violent, raving like a mad man about the reckoning that’s yet to come. Batshit crazy. I still remember them cutting him open, alive. I still remember them giving him serums to see how it affected him. The screams of agony, the look on his face.” Gabriel remembers standing, looming over him, still wearing his mask. ‘We just want to look inside, see why you’re like this.’ The voice of his says in the hazy memory. He remembers him being helplessly strapped down, unable to do anything but scream. The serums make him worse. Until he’s lunging, clawing at Gabriel’s throat like a wild animal, put down with a gunshot. Like an animal.

“I remember the serums we would give them, we didn’t know how they would react with the microchip and the metals but we injected them, often having to restrain them to do it. We’d make them go days without food, we’d test their endurance often. We’d keep those addicted to the emotional stimulus pills in a room with them. We weren’t good but we were punishing them, to figure out what made them tick. So we could figure out a cure to why they act the way they do. But we don’t even know that there is a cure. There likely isn’t but that’s why you’re here isn’t it?” 

Renée again feels sick knowing this information. Knowing that this man has done terrible things. “We want to humanely do it now but we’re preparing for another attack. It’s been far too quiet lately and like Murphy’s law states if it can go wrong it will.” Renée clears her throat, “are you going to kill whoever intrudes if they’re violent then or on edge?” Gabriel takes a moment of pause before talking “we only kill those who try to kill us. Here it’s kill or be killed and I’m going to give you some advice, don’t trust people here. Keep yourself guarded at all times. That’s how you protect yourself out here.”

“Then how do I know how to trust you?”

“You don’t,” he says very simply and it doesn’t quell her anxiety. It makes her feel worse about the situation and she clutches again at the necklace around her neck. She feels the tension rise in the room and it’s Gabriel’s fault without a single shred of a doubt. “You just have to trust me and make that decision for yourself. I can’t tell you what to do. I can only give you advice.” She nods but it doesn’t fully make sense to her. She’s agreeing without actually believing in it. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I trust you.”

“But why do you trust me? Why don’t you follow your own philosophy of not trusting other people?” He took a pause at that. “You’re right,” he says and leaves it at that. Eventually all conversation abruptly stops and there’s silence in the air. It gives her time to think and she can’t help but feel slightly off. She can’t quite put her finger on it but it’s there. “I should go, we’re preparing for another raid.” He leaves and suddenly she’s left alone in the archive room. A part of her is curious about Gabriel but at the same time she doesn’t know what she wants to find out.

She’s left wondering why he trusts her. Not really being able to come to a logical conclusion. She’s a criminal and she tells herself that for the umpteenth time. She betrayed an organization that was supposed to be good but wasn’t. Her naïveté trapped her within Sinaiticus for so long that in a way she still felt she was wrong.

She remembers everything. Every detail of her past that’s led her here. She knows she isn’t wrong deep in her heart, she knows she’s done the right thing but she can’t help but feel like it wasn’t. The government had sheltered her since she was 12 years old. 15 years of lies and she’s paid for it.

She remembers everything, why she’s here, what she did. And in that moment she understands while she’s , alone with her thoughts.

She’s becoming reborn. Yet she doesn’t know fully who she is anymore. She’s lost the thing that made sense to her. Something she’s followed her whole entire life. Everything breaks down for her. She’s a traitor, a rebel.

Maybe she likes that.


End file.
